feel any disappointment at the near prospect of a most lamentable extension of the hostilities which already press upon the resources of the country. But it is good to have our eyes at length opened to see things, and men, in their real colours and natural proportions and to know upon whom we can now rely for the salvation of the state, from the only remaining perils which it has yet to encounter. We now must allow, that the people themselves alone can extricate the country from its difficulties; and that it would be idle to seek for a check to the pernicious system of the court and its ministers from any other quarter than the public voice. That voice, if firmly, yet peacefully raised, is, we know, irresistible. It has awed the most undaunted-steadied the most capricious-and disconcerted the most perfidious of princes. It has been found more than a match for monarchs, whose courage, seconded by the decent regularities of their private life, and upheld by talents of no ordinary description, seemed well fitted to overpower the liberties of their subjects, and to establish a dominion in which the royal will might prevail, uncontrolled by the sentiments or wishes of the community. Even against such an influence we have no doubt that it may still make itself heard with effect; and assuredly it can have nothing to dread from a conflict (if in the course of ages such a conflict should await it) with adversaries of a different description. Let this voice but interfere, and Ireland may yet be saved to the empire; and peace with our brethren in America may still be maintained.

With a view to assist the people in considering the questions relating to this last subject, we purpose at present to treat of them in a plain and intelligible shape. They are indeed such as any one may easily understand; and it would be hard to conceive a point more worthy of exercising the attention of the country, or a moment better calculated to rouse them to a view of their dearest interests. The universal prevalence of distress, and the general tendency towards discontent, are admitted. To a certain degree, say one class of reasoners, the policy of the enemy has succeeded; and the Continent is closed to our trade. The enemy's policy, say their opponents, seconded by our own, has effected what, alone, it never could have done; and, by the concurrence of the two systems, England is excluded from the Continental market. Both agree in the fact; each party acknowledges that the result has been, to confine our trade, and reduce the demand for our wares. Then, the next measure of our rulers being an American war, it is for the country to reflect, how vast an addition this would make to its distresses. Or, if the interruption of intercourse with America has already been complete, and if to this cause is to be ascribed a part of the

pressure, it is for the country to consider, how great, and how instantaneous a relief the renewal of that intercourse would bring. Why then should we go to war with America? And wherefore do we not suffer that intercourse to be restored? These are questions which every one must desire to see answered, who reflects that the United States buy yearly from Yorkshire and Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, above twelve millions worth of their manufactures; and that if, to a final shutting up of this vast markct, were added an open rupture with the Americans, they have above fifteen thousand sail of vessels ready to become privateers, and to prey on whatever commerce might remain to us-sheltered by almost all the ports in Europe, and by those which stud a coast of 1500 miles in length on the other side of the Atlantic, in the midst of all our colonies. We urge not these matters as reasons for taking fright, and being driven by America into any concessions derogatory to our honour, or inconsistent with our interests: but we mention them as very good reasons for pausing before we determine, that the points demanded are such as we cannot, either in honour, or for our interest, yield; and we think they render it incumbent on those who would hold out at such a price, to satisfy themselves beyond all doubt that the right side of the argument is theirs.

The Americans are, in every respect the most important, and, in some sort, the only nation which has kept clear of all actual share in the wide-spreading hostilities that have swept over the face of the world during the last twenty years. To maintain this neutrality has, no doubt, been the leading object of many states; but, except America, no nation has been able to succeed; and she unquestionably owes her success to the distance of her situation from the scene of hostilities. In every war, neutrals are liable to be viewed with distrust and dislike by the contending parties, whose passions being roused, cannot easily excuse the calm unconcern of such as choose to remain bystanders; and whose losses and privations, the result of the war, fill them with envy towards those who not only escape unhurt by it, but gain a great portion of what the belligerents lose. Thus it always happens, that neutrality becomes odious to the combatants, instead of appearing, as it really is, an alleviation of the evils which their own passions are inflicting on the world, and on each other.

First, it is found out that this war' is unlike all former wars; that it is a war for national existence ;—and that to take no part, which in other cases might be allowable and even laudable, in this grand contest, is highly criminal. Nor can any war be found, to which the same description and the same remarks

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have not been applied;-from contentions about a few acres of snow or a fishing or a fur station,-to the Polish partition, and the French and Spanish revolutions. This feeling being at the bottom of the sentiments entertained towards neutrals, an opportunity is speedily found or made, for giving vent to it in a regular and formal manner. The neutral is accused by one belligerent of assisting the other; and this branches into an infinite variety of charges. Sometimes this aid is given by employing the neutral vessel to cover the enemy's property. The belligerents take different views of the point; and the one which is most powerful at sea looks to the real ownerships of the cargo, while the other maintains, that the character of the vessel should be the only criterion whereby to judge of the character of the lading. Hence the question, whether free ships make free goods or not? A question which, in our humble apprehension, in point of right, is clearly with England-however remote her interest may be in asserting it, considering the vast interest she has in the extension of commercial dealings beyond that of any other country.

Then it is found that neutrals trade in articles immediately subservient to the military operations of one of the parties. The neutrals cannot deny that such conduct would be an infraction of neutrality; but they deny the fact, and refuse to be searched on their voyages-the only means whereby the belligerent can ascertain whether the charge be well founded or no. Thus arises the question of right of search, mixed up with some lesser discussions as to what shall be deemed contraband of war. This right of search has been extended to a case of a more delicate nature-for the reclaiming of deserters from the navy of a belligerent, sheltering themselves on board of neutral vessels-a right rendered still more delicate in the case of the British navy, where the men are not voluntarily enlisted, but forced into the service. When such deserters have taken refuge in neutral merchantmen, it seems as if it were no very violent extension of the right of search to allow the recovery of those men. carry the claim a step farther, and search the vessels of the state; But an attempt has been made to an attempt so inconsistent with all sound principle, and so utterly repugnant to the law of nations, that it was abandoned, almost as soon as it was challenged; and forms the solitary instance, we believe, of a dereliction of any maritime pretension on the part of this country during the late, or the present war.

Again, the neutral engages, during war, in trades from which he was excluded during peace; and each belligerent uniformly encourages this interposition of the neutral flag. Thus France opens her colonial trade to the neutral on the commencement of hostilities; and England, as regularly as she passes the prize act,

begins each war with a suspension of the branch of the navigation act, which excludes foreigners from the carrying trade. But although each belligerent approves this in his own case, he wishes to prevent the other from benefiting by it; and as the party which is weak at sea benefits the most, the party preponderating in this respect most zealously attempts to check it; and hence the principle contended for by England chiefly in the war 1756, and which has from that date received its name. But the most fruitful source of discord arises from the right of blockade; and as no assumed privilege of war more largely affects the neutral, or gives rise to more plausible complaints on his part, so it seems to merit somewhat of a nearer examination. It involves the whole question of Orders in Council, and the present disputes with America.

The right to blockade a strong place, as a fortress, or a city, of the enemy, that is to say, of cutting off all communication with it, for the purpose of compelling it to surrender, is as ancient and undoubted as the right of making war. This interruption of communication may, and in most cases probably will, affect peaceable subjects as well as persons bearing arms; and it may frequently affect the interest of third parties, or neutrals, by depriving them of a beneficial intercourse with the blockaded place. But the right to injure neutrals in this manner has never been denied; because the course of hostile operations absolutely required it, and the exercise of it had a tendency, by severely distressing the enemy, and producing a great change in the relative strength of the belligerents, to shorten the period of hostilities, and attain the great end of all war-the end to which every principle should bear a reference-the restoration of peace. From this clear and admitted right of blockade, it is perhaps a slight, but unquestionably a certain deviation, to allow the blockade of a place, not in its nature a position military-as a large and wealthy manufacturing town, or a convenient place of maritime trade. Here the sufferers are, in the first instance, peaceable citizens-who furnish indeed, by their wealth and their industry, the resources of war, but the protection of whom ought in general to be an object of public law. Yet the impossibility of drawing a line between those cases in which the distress of an enemy's financial resources may contribute to shorten the conflict, and on the whole, to lessen the evils of war, and those where it can only make the contest more miserable, without abridging its duration,-renders it quite necessary to allow of this extention of the right of blockade; and, accordingly, no one can deny the title of a belligerent to blockade any harbour, or any city, or any moderately large district, without regard to its military character, unless he is also prepared to dispute the right

of privateering by sea, and of levying contributions, and quartering troops; and, in a word, marching troops through a territory on shore. War between governments, and peace between nations, is indeed a notion beautiful to contemplate; but it was not made for human affairs; and when pursued ever so short a way, will be found wholly inconsistent with the nature of hostilities. At any rate, it never was recognized, either by the practice of nations, or by any authority whatever, on matters of public law. It can form no part then of our present consideration.

If from single towns, or harbours, or small districts, we extend our view to large territories-to whole provinces-or large lines of coast-very different considerations must enter to qualify our inferences. Suppose a belligerent powerful enough to surround a whole kingdom by a cordon of troops, in such force as to prevent, by physical superiority, all ingress and egress at any part of the circle; and the question is raised, not whether the entrance or egress of troops and stores may lawfully be stopt by these means; but whether every cart, horse, and foot passenger may thus be stopt, and his goods confiscated, and his person imprisoned, for making the attempt-we acknowledge that there appears some difficulty in giving this question an affirmative answer. For here is evidently a most grievous injury inflicted upon the neighbouring neutral-so grievous indeed, that the case may well be put, in which the pressure of such a measure of hostility would fall as heavily on the neutral as on the enemy on the party not intended to be at all affected by it, as on him against whom it was professedly levelled. For if two nations, lying contiguous, as Holland and Brabant, should be, as they naturally will be, each the best customer of the other, the blockade of the one which is at war with us, operates exactly as a blockade of the other also, which, so far from being at war, ought by all the principles of public law to be encouraged in its neutrality, and favoured, so long as it preserves a real and sincere indifference in its conduct towards the belligerents. To visit a nation of this description so severely, is surely a consummation to be greatly deprecated; unless where some inducement of a very high and paramount kind may seem to dispense with the natural and just feeling of favour, and to authorize, upon more large views of general expediency, such a departure from ordinary principles. But as the prospect of speedily terminating hos tilities by some such extraordinary pressure on the enemy, may be thought to justify even such a blockade as this-we are not disposed to deny it absolutely as a general principle; and the admission must consequently be extended to such a blockade by sea of a whole coast, as a very powerful fleet, aided by innumerable